In the new issue of Regulation, economist Pierre Lemieux argues that the recent oil price decline is at least partly the result of increased supply from the extraction of shale oil. The increased supply allows the economy to produce more goods, which benefits some people, if not all of them. Thus, contrary to some commentary in the press, cheaper oil prices cannot harm the economy as a whole.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

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Tag: medicaid

The Economist’s Free Exchange blog asks: “[W]hy isn’t federal aid to states more popular, and popular enough to get through Congress, given that nearly every American lives in one?”

I would ask the blog’s author: How much more popular would he like it to be? As the following charts show, federal aid to state and local governments has catapulted to record levels.

As I’ve discussed elsewhere, Medicaid has been driving the growth in federal subsidies to state and local governments. But other areas, such as education, income security, and transportation, have also seen substantial increases.

Subsidizing state and local government is quite popular with federal, state, and local policymakers and associated special interests. It’s doubtful the average citizen is aware that so much of their state’s spending is derived from their federal tax dollars. However, I suspect that most folks (who aren’t on the take) would frown upon the concept of sending money to Washington only to have politicians send it back to the states via the federal bureaucracy. While there may be popular support for many of the state programs funded with federal dollars, citizens need to understand that federal subsidization of state and local government has fueled unhealthy government growth at all levels.

Sen. Jim Bunning (R., Ky.) blocked “extended” unemployment benefits beyond their scheduled expiration on February 27. That thwarted bill would also have put off, again, a scheduled 21 percent cut in Medicare payments to physicians. Democrats were outraged. But why?

Bunning just wanted to use leftover “stimulus” money to pay for the benefits. Why not? Such transfer payments accounted for over 80 percent of stimulus spending last year.

Besides, as Federal Reserve policymakers noted, the evidence is overwhelming (see here and here) that extending unemployment benefits from six months to nearly two years has raised the unemployment rate by a percentage point or two. I’ve waited since 1991 for someone to prove I’m wrong about that. Nobody has, because nobody can.

If the maximum duration of jobless benefits were trimmed by 13 to 20 weeks (which is all that’s at stake), they would still be far more extended than ever before. But the unemployment rate by the time of this November’s elections would be much lower than otherwise. Would Democrats prefer to go into the elections with an unemployment rate near 10 percent or a rate below 9 percent?

As for Medicare, slashing payments to physicians is the Democrats’ favorite way of paying for expanding Medicaid enrollment and health-insurance subsidies for the non-poor. If they really think that will work, how can they possibly object to saving money sooner rather than later?

Earlier this week I criticized the U.S. Conference of Mayors for going to Washington and groveling for more federal handouts. Let me provide some more background for my criticisms with a look at federal budget data. The first chart shows that since 1960, total federal subsidies to state and local government have increased an astounding 1,173%.

Several readers have asked me what particular programs account for this large increase in state aid. The federal budget breaks down the total figures into categories. Not surprisingly, health subsidies — mainly Medicaid — account for almost half of the current total and are the driving force behind the massive overall increase:

However, there have been large increases in other activities as well. Here are the changes by federal budget function in state aid since 1960, in billions of 2010 dollars:

*Administration of Justice begins in 1975. “Other” begins in 1965 and consists of grants for national defense, energy, social security, and veterans’ benefits and services.

All of these categories are at or near their high water mark in constant dollars with the exception of Natural Resources & Environment ($13.8 in 1980), Agriculture ($4.5 in 1985), and General Government ($26.9 in 1975).

Rather than being deprived, state and local governments have developed an unhealthy dependency on federal money. In a way, the states have become an extension of the federal government. This is at odds with the Constitution, which clearly intended for the federal government to have specific limited powers. As the 10th amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” There seems to be very little reserved to the states anymore, and even less to the people.

As Congress hashes out an agreement behind closed doors to expand the government’s role in health care, a Medicaid story out of New York serves as another reminder that government is part of the health care problem, not the solution. Audits released by the state’s comptroller found $169 million in misspent funds, including a $196,000 cab bill for a woman who took a daily $300 taxi ride to visit her son in Albany for three years.

The following are some of the findings:

$53 million in overpayments for Medicaid recipients who had multiple identification numbers.

$20 million that was nearly spent because the state’s computer system failed to catch a clerical error. Auditors caught it before it was paid out.

$5.4 million in overpayments to 10 hospitals that billed for discharging a patient when, in fact, the patient had been transferred to another facility. Hospitals receive higher payments for discharges rather than transfers.

$1.2 million paid for services that were not medically necessary or not provided.

According to the state’s comptroller, “[T]he state Medicaid system is leaking millions of dollars… Safeguards designed to protect the taxpayers by detecting waste, fraud and abuse keep failing.” However, this is business as usual when it comes to New York’s notoriously fraud-ridden Medicaid program, as a Cato essay on fraud and abuse in federal programs notes:

The former chief investigator of the state’s Medicaid fraud office believes that about 10 percent of the state’s Medicaid budget is consumed by pure fraud, while another 20 to 30 percent is consumed by dubious spending that might not cross the line of being outright criminal.

A 2005 investigation by the New York Times found remarkably brazen examples of fraud and abuse in New York’s Medicaid. The article noted that the program has “become so huge, so complex, and so lightly policed that it is easily exploited… [T]he program has been misspending billions of dollars annually because of fraud, waste, and profiteering.”

With the massive and complex expansion of Medicaid and other health programs in the pending legislation, we can expect a gargantuan expansion in fraud and abuse. The good news, I suppose, is that the government will need a massive hiring of new health care auditors, which should reduce the nation’s unemployment rate.

During the runaway inflations of 1974 and 1979, Presidents Ford and Carter suggested that inflation was caused by the profligacy of American households. President Ford’s infamous “Whip Inflation Now” speech, for example, said, “Here is what we must do, what each and every one of you can do: To help increase food and lower prices, grow more and waste less; to help save scarce fuel in the energy crisis, drive less, heat less.”

Much of the recent discussion of health care costs likewise treats this as a problem caused by a demonic private insurance industry, and therefore requiring such “reforms” as expanding Medicaid to the non-poor and Medicare to the non-old.

The facts are quite different, as shown in “The Evolution of Medical Spending Risk” by Jonathan Gruber of MIT and Helen Levy of the University of Michigan, in the latest Journal of Economic Perspectives.

In any case, President Obama’s claim that the pace of total public and private spending on health care could somehow be “contained” by greatly increasing government spending clearly flunks 3rd grade arithmetic.

Unless the hidden agenda is to impose draconian wage and price controls and political rationing on health care providers, all the rhetorical pretense about proposed health care legislation being a way to hold down overall spending on health care is like saying the solution to chronic drunkeness is more booze.

President Obama gave what seems like his thousandth exclusive health care interview last night, this one to ABC News’s Charles Gibson. In trying to sell his health care plan, the president warned that if Congress does not pass legislation controlling health care costs, the federal government “will go bankrupt.” He also warned that unless health care is reformed, “your premiums will go up.”

The president is absolutely correct about that. The only problem is that, according to the president’s own chief health care actuary, the bills that Congress is now considering do nothing to restrain either federal health care spending or total health care costs. In fact, Rick Foster, chief actuary at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) says that if Congress passes the bill now before the Senate, health care spending will actually increase by $234 billion more over the next 10 years than if we did nothing.

And, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the congressional bills do little or nothing to reduce the growth in insurance premiums. Even if a bill passes, premiums will roughly double by 2016, and keep rising after that. But for millions of Americans the bill will actually make things worse. According to CBO, the Senate bill would actually increase insurance premiums by 10-13 percent for Americans who buy their insurance through the non-group market, that is those who don’t receive insurance from their employer. Those 10-13 percent increases are over and above the increases that would occur if we did nothing.

On the other hand, if the president were really serious about controlling health care costs and lowering premiums, he wouldn’t need to spend trillions of dollars and take over one-sixth of the US economy; he could try some of the ideas written about here, and here, and here.